Sparrow

Stanton Welch AM was born in Melbourne to Marilyn Jones OBE and Garth Welch AM, two of Australia's most gifted dancers of the 1960s and 1970s.  He joined The Australian Ballet, rising to the rank of leading soloist and performing various principal roles, before serving as Resident Choreographer. During his decades long career, Welch has choreographed over 100 works including audience favorites Madame Butterfly (1995), Clear (2001), and Divergence (1994). His work can be seen in the repertoire of The Australian Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, and Birmingham Royal Ballet, among others. In July 2003, Welch was appointed Artistic Director of Houston Ballet, America's fourth-largest ballet company. Welch has choreographed more than 40 works for Houston Ballet, including Marie (2009) and spectacular stagings of Swan Lake (2006), La Bayadère (2010), Romeo and Juliet (2015), Giselle (2016), The Nutcracker (2016), Sylvia (2019), and Raymonda (2025). Developing Houston Ballet into a choreographic Eden, Welch has commissioned over 30 works from notable choreographers such as Mark Morris, Aszure Barton, Dwight Rhoden, Trey McIntyre, and Justin Peck, while expanding the company’s repertoire with works from internationally acclaimed choreographers including George Balanchine, William Forsythe, Jiří Kylián, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, John Neumeier, Twyla Tharp, and Jerome Robbins. Under Welch’s leadership, Houston Ballet has appeared across the globe including recent engagements in Tokyo, Dubai, Melbourne, New York City, and Washington, D.C. Welch continues to nurture the next generation of artists through the Houston Ballet Academy, a leading institution in dance education and training. 

Simon & Garfunkel were a popular American folk-rock duo comprised of singer-songwriter Paul Simon and singer Art Garfunkel from the late 1960s.  They were known for their vocal harmonies and were popular recording artists of the 1960s.  They have sold millions of albums and performed sold-out shows worldwide.

Paul Simon was born on October 13, 1941 in Newark, New Jersey and Art Garfunkel was born on November 5, 1941 in Forest Hills, New York.  They met as 11-year-olds in 1953 at an elementary school in Queens, New York sharing their love of music, harmonizing and song writing. They formed the group Tom & Jerry and had a minor hit in 1957 with their version of The Everly Brothers’ “Hey, Schoolgirl.”  Shortly afterwards the pair went their separate ways briefly.

They reconnected in the early 1960s exploring folk-rock music and began singing together again. They renamed themselves Simon & Garfunkel upon landing a record deal from Columbia Records.  Their debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., was released in 1964 including “The Sound of Silence.”  “The Sound of Silence” acoustic recording was overdubbed with electric instruments and drums making it their first hit in America and United Kingdom in 1965, eventually going platinum.

Four more studio albums followed: Sounds of Silence (1966), Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (1966), Bookends (1968) and Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970), delivering hits including “The Sound of Silence,” “I Am a Rock,” “A Hazy Shade of Winter,” “The Only Living Boy in New York,” “Scarborough Fair/Canticle,” “Mrs. Robinson,” “Homeward Bound,” “Cecilia,” “America” and the titular “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

In 1968, Paul Simon was awarded the Grammy for the Best Original Score for the soundtrack to The Graduate.   From 1968 to 1970, the duo was awarded multiple Grammys for “Mrs. Robinson” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water” ranging from Best Contemporary Pop Performance, Record and Album of the Year, Best Contemporary Song and Vocal Group, Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists and Song of the Year. 

Amidst the hit records and live performances, rivalry and diverging ambitions continued to unravel the partnership.  Garfunkel began acting in 1970 in films which further strained the partnership.  Publicly they appeared amicable for their final two hometown concerts at Forest Hills Stadium in 1970.  They departed professionally and personally after the second show.  Both went on to have successful solo careers.  Simon & Garfunkel have performed on occasion during the years since their breakup.  They performed multiple nights together at Madison Square Garden as well as playing the legendary 1981 show documented on the album Concert in Central Park.
 
Simon & Garfunkel were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.  They received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2003 Grammys.  They continue to be icons in pop culture.  

Ben Stevenson, a native of Portsmouth, England, received his dance training at the Arts and Educational School in London. He appeared with the Royal Ballet and English National Ballet where, as a principal dancer, he performed lead roles in all the classics. He has received numerous awards for his choreography, including three gold medals at the International Ballet Competitions. For his contributions to international dance, Mr. Stevenson was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.) by Queen Elizabeth II in December 1999. In April 2000, he was presented with the Dance Magazine Award. In 2018, Mr. Stevenson was acknowledged by the Chinese government as one of the most influential Foreign Experts in the past 40 years since China initiated its policy on Reform and Opening Up. Mr. Stevenson assumed the artistic directorship of Texas Ballet Theater in July 2003. In 2022, Mr. Stevenson was named Artistic Director Laureate in recognition of his lengthy tenure. Previously he served as artistic director of Houston Ballet (1976-2003), elevating the company from a regional troupe to an internationally acclaimed ensemble.

Born in Munich, Germany, in 1864, Richard Strauss was a leading composer of the modern orchestra and a master of composing for the human voice. The son of an eminent horn player, Franz Strauss, he was trained in music at home from the age of 4 and later attended the University of Munich.

His early works were strongly influenced by the classical and romantic masters, leading to the creation of Burleske (1885) for piano and orchestra and a symphonic fantasy Aus Italien (1887). Between 1887 to 1904, Strauss developed the symphonic poem, making a notable contribution to the repertory of program music.

With the premiere of his tone poem, Don Juan (1888), he became known as a leading progressive composer. Other works produced in this period include Macbeth (1890), Death and Transfiguration (1890), Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks (1895), and Don Quixote (1897).

His compositions from 1904 to 1949 were mostly operas, including Elektra (1909) and Der Rosenkavalier (or The Cavalier of the Rose, 1911). After the production of his first successful opera, Salome (1905), Strauss formed a partnership with the Austrian poet and librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Together, they produced many “Neo-Classical” operas inspired by Classical and Enlightenment ideals related to balance, order, and harmony, including Ariadne auf Naxos (or Ariadne at Naxos, 1916) and Arabella (1933).

Starting at the age of 21, Strauss was a successful conductor of orchestras and director of opera houses in Germany and Austria. He also had an international conducting career, which took him to North and South America as well as most parts of Europe throughout the 1920s.

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, George Balanchine is regarded as the foremost contemporary choreographer in the world of ballet. He came to the United States in late 1933, at the age of 29, accepting the invitation of the young American arts patron Lincoln Kirstein (1907 - 1996), whose great passions included the dream of creating a ballet company in America. At Balanchine’s behest, Kirstein was also prepared to support the formation of an American academy of ballet that would eventually rival the long-established schools of Europe. This was the School of American Ballet, founded in 1934, the first product of the Balanchine-Kirstein collaboration. Several ballet companies directed by the two were created and dissolved in the years that followed, while Balanchine found other outlets for his choreography. Eventually, with a performance on October 11, 1948, the New York City Ballet was born. Balanchine served as its ballet master and principal choreographer from 1948 until his death in 1983. Balanchine’s more than 400 dance works include Serenade (1934), Concerto Barocco (1941), Le Palais de Cristal, later renamed Symphony in C (1947), Orpheus (1948), The Nutcracker (1954), Agon (1957), Symphony in Three Movements (1972), Stravinsky Violin Concerto (1972), Vienna Waltzes (1977), Ballo della Regina (1978), and Mozartiana (1981). His final ballet, a new version of Stravinsky’s Variations for Orchestra, was created in 1982. He also choreographed for films, operas, revues, and musicals. Among his best known dances for the stage is Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, originally created for Broadway’s On Your Toes (1936). The musical was later made into a movie. A major artistic figure of the twentieth century, Balanchine revolutionized the look of classical ballet. Taking classicism as his base, he heightened, quickened, expanded, streamlined, and even inverted the fundamentals of the 400-year-old language of academic dance. This had an inestimable influence on the growth of dance in America. Although at first his style seemed particularly suited to the energy and speed of American dancers, especially those he trained, his ballets are now performed by all the major classical ballet companies throughout the world. ©The George Balanchine Trust

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893), often anglicized as Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, was a Russian composer of the late-Romantic period, some of whose works are among the most popular music in the classical repertoire. He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally, bolstered by his appearances as a guest conductor in Europe and the United States. Tchaikovsky was honored in 1884, by Emperor Alexander III, and awarded a lifetime pension.